


One Thing at a Time

by 1848pianist



Series: Raise a Glass to the Four of Us [5]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Agender Hercules Mulligan, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Hamilton, Dad Friend Hercules Mulligan, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Sewing, Trans Male Character, trans hamilton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 02:05:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7462458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1848pianist/pseuds/1848pianist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander finds he doesn't know everything or have it all together. Luckily, he has Hercules. And luckily, Hercules knows how to sew.</p>
<p>Or, how Alexander Hamilton learned to sew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Thing at a Time

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from, but I've been meaning to write more Hercules anyway, so here it is! Happy Duel Day, have some fluff(ish). 
> 
> I apologize in advance for any mistakes, as I am editing this while exhausted.

Alexander wakes up on a couch. Not his couch. Not in his apartment. But familiar.

Hercules’—he’s in Hercules’ apartment.

He sits up, groggy. His muscles ache the way they do when he takes a too-long nap in the middle of the afternoon. This is not as painful as his headache, which occasionally sends sharp twinges down his spine as if reminding him it’s still there. The past few days – or a week, maybe, he isn’t sure – are beginning to come back to him, more of an awareness of their existence than any real memory. He wonders how long he’s been asleep. In any case, he’s still tired.

Combined, these facts suggest that he’s either had a manic episode or been in a mildly serious car accident.

“Alexander! You’re awake!”

Alex looks up and sees Hercules leaning against the doorframe.

“Hey,” Alex replies. “How long have I been here?”

Xe shrugs. “Sixteen hours.”

Sixteen hours. Christ. “What day—?”

“Tuesday. The twenty-first.”

“Fuck,” Alex groans. He drops his head into his hands.

“Did you miss something?” Hercules asks. “I think I reached all your professors…”

“No. I just—that’s a long time.” He runs his hands through his hair. Greasy. He needs a shower. “That was the worst I’ve had in. Well. A while.”

“Yeah,” Hercules says in sympathy. “You hungry?”

Alex hadn’t noticed, but he is. Very. “Yeah. I can help cook—” He starts to get up, but Hercules waves him off.

“No need.”

“I’m fine, I can—”

Hercules gives him a look. “Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep if you want.”

“You’ve done enough for me already, though.” Again. Because this isn’t the first time he’s ended up in one of his friends’ apartments after an episode. “I don’t want to become a burden.”

“Good, since you aren’t. If you just need something to do, you can turn the TV on.”

Alex runs his hand through his hair again. Hercules can be at least as stubborn as he is and isn’t likely to change xir mind. Also, Alex is too tired to argue, for once. “Can I use your shower?”

“Sure.”

Alex gets up, slightly unsteady but not unmanageably so. His headache pulses in protest, then subsides. Heading out of the living room, he nearly trips over a bag he recognizes as his own, containing a clean set of clothes and some other things from his apartment. Alex sighs, wondering just how much time Hercules spent making sure he wasn’t going to do anything he would sincerely regret. He checks his phone, which is also in the bag, relieved to find that he didn’t send any especially alarming texts. There are a couple to Lafayette, even more rambling than Alex’s texts usually are, with ideas for freelance articles he’s writing. That might have been what tipped Hercules off.

Just thinking about showering drains Alex’s energy, but he already feels gross. He needs to be doing something, even if it’s just taking a shower.

He had learned a long time ago that isn’t really a point where exhaustion overwhelms dysphoria, however much he would like there to be one. His ribs ache painfully when he takes his off binder – he has no idea how long he’s been wearing it. Obviously longer than is advisable.

He sits down underneath the showerhead, too tired to stand.

His best estimate, based on his incomplete memories, is that this episode lasted around eight days, the worst of it being the past three, which he can hardly remember at all. It’s certainly not his longest, but it’s his longest in a while. At least the longest since he went to college, where he met Hercules and Eliza and Laurens and everyone. Where he was diagnosed, and got an explanation and medicine and all the things that keep him comparatively stable.

But this isn’t the only time he’s ended up at Hercules’ apartment after a bad episode. He wonders and worries when his friends are going to get tired of picking up the pieces of his life every third week.

He stands up, turns the water off, and dresses as hurriedly as he can so he doesn’t have to look at himself. Even though it’s hot, he pulls a sweatshirt over his t-shirt to disguise his chest. He ties his hair back even though it’s still wet, just to get it out of his face.

“Feel any better?” Hercules asks him when he comes back into the kitchen.

“Sort of,” Alex replies. “Thanks for…well, everything.”

“No problem,” xe says, slapping him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s eat.”

Alex barely tastes the food, although he knows Hercules to be a good cook. In fact, his entire body seems to be a separate thing from his mind, which is paying little attention to his surroundings.

He must be obvious, because Hercules asks, “Hey, you okay?”

Alex shakes his head. “As much as can be expected, I guess. Listen, Herc, you don’t have to take care of me. I’ll be fine if I just go back to my apartment.”

“I’m not doing it out of obligation,” Hercules says.

“Fine, but…this is just going to keep happening, alright? And I don’t want to put you in a position of—”

“Alex, hey. You’re not a burden, alright? You’re not, I dunno, imposing on me.”

“Yes I am,” Alex says, staring down at his hands.

Hercules just looks at him.

“Look, I’m just going to go back to my apartment. Thanks again.”

“Alex, wait.” Hercules stands up and catches him by the arm. “At least let me come with you. Your apartment is…sort of a mess.”

“I’ll take care of it.

“Seriously, Alex.” For once, Hercules isn’t joking. “I’m asking you to let me help you. Because I want to.”

Alex looks down. “You really don’t have to—”

“Yeah, I know.”

Finally, Alex gives in. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

*

“Shit,” Alex says when he opens the door. His apartment really _is_ a disaster.

“Yep,” Hercules agrees cheerfully. “So, where do we start?”

Alex goes over to his desk, shifting one of the massive stacks of paper and books. He picks up the open notebook on the top of the pile and flips through it.

“None of this even makes any sense,” he sighs, throwing it back on the stack. He turns and looks at the floor of the living room, which is mostly covered by laundry and more books.

The kitchen is equally a mess, with dishes piled up all over the counters. On the other hand, his bedroom is relatively clean, mostly because he hasn’t gone in it for who knows how long.

Feeling suddenly overwhelmed, Alex shoves a pile of clothes off the couch and sits down. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“I’ll start a load of laundry,” Hercules says. “Why don’t you make a list of things that need to be cleaned up?”

Lists are manageable. They’re organized, even if the rest of Alex’s life is chaos. A way of imposing order on his environment.

“Yeah, okay.”

The list ends up being long, but even as tired as he is, this is still much more manageable than the mess around him.

He reaches for the pile of laundry he had knocked off onto the floor. The shirt on top – one of his few semi-nice ones – has a large rip down the side. He sighs, because, of course this happens.

Hercules, coming up the stairs from the laundry room in the basement, looks over at him. “What?”

Alex holds the shirt up.

“Looks like just a torn seam,” Hercules says. “I have thread if you need it.”

“I uh.” Alex hesitates. “I don’t know how to sew.”

Hercules looks amused. “Really?”

“No. I mean. I know it’s not that hard, I just—”

“I can teach you.”

Alex blinks. “No, that’s okay. You don’t have to.”

“Come on,” xe says. Xe smiles and sits down next to him, picking up the torn shirt. “You’re right, it’s not hard. But it’s easier to learn in person than from YouTube videos. And you have a resident expert.”

“Herc—”

“Come on, you want to be all self-sufficient, right? Well, here you go.”

Alex sighs. “Alright. Where do I start?”

“Well, first you’re going to need some thread and a needle.”

“I don’t know if I have that…”

Hercules grins. “Luckily I am always prepared for a sewing emergency. So you’ve never done this at all?”

Alex scowls, even though he knows Hercules is genuinely asking and not making fun of him. “I never really had the opportunity to learn. I have a theoretical knowledge of how it works.”

“If only sewing worked theoretically,” Hercules says. “Come on. We’ll start with the easiest stuff. Mending tears and busted seams like this. Nothing too complicated.”

Hercules, it turns out, really does carry around an emergency sewing kit. It actually includes backups of everything, so xe and Alex won’t even have to share.

“Do you just bring this everywhere with the intention of making me learn how to sew?” Alex asks, half-joking. “Be honest.”

“You caught me,” xe says, grinning. “Do you have anything else that needs fixing? This will be easier if I can show you what to do.”

This, Alex can provide. He has a few things he always means to get fixed, or to learn how to fix, but up until now never found the time.

“Will this work?” He shows Hercules a sweatshirt with a long tear along the side. Alex remembers catching it on the nail that stuck out from the bannister in the stairway of his last apartment.

“You really don’t throw anything away,” Hercules says. “But yeah, this’ll work.”

Back in Alex’s living room, Hercules hands him something small and plastic with a wire loop on the end.

“What’s—?”

“You’ll see.” Xe hands Alex a needle (“Don’t drop it.”) and a spool of black thread. Then xe picks up xir own spool and needle, pushes the thread through the wire loop on the plastic bit, and pushes the wire, thread and all, through the eye of the needle. “ _Voila_.” Xe ties the thread in a knot. “Your turn.”

Alex copies hir and ends up with roughly the same result.

“What is that called?” he asks, pointing towards the thing with the wire loop and making a mental note to look for one next time he goes to the store. “That needle threading thing.”

“Uh, a needle threader?”

“Oh, right,” Alex mutters, slightly embarrassed.

Hercules, thankfully, pretends it never happened. “Okay, now,” xe says, shaking out the sweatshirt and looking for the tear, “you want to lay it flat, so you get the seam straight.”

“I’ve never done anything straight in my life,” Alex deadpans.

Hercules snorts. “Like I haven’t heard that before.”

Xe shows Alex how to make the stitch – luckily it’s a small tear, so he doesn’t have much opportunity for error. Xe only stops him once. (“Not too tight, you’ll pucker the fabric. Here, like this.”)

Then, before Alex knows it, both the shirt and the sweatshirt are done.

“Wow, thanks,” he says, examining them. He realizes that his mind has been quiet the entire time they’ve been working. It’s nice, having something accomplished and accomplished well without the sense of urgency that comes when he writes.

“No problem,” xe says. “You’re not bad at this. Maybe I’ll hire you.”

Alex laughs. “Okay.”

“You’ll be paid in Monopoly money, of course.” Hercules grins.

“Of course,” Alex replies. “Still, it’s more than I’ll be making from that article.” He waves a hand towards his desk, where last week’s barely legible draft still sits. He sighs. “Thanks again. For teaching me, I mean, and…you know. Everything.” His mind still feels scrambled, like it’s running at half capacity.

He’s jerked out of his thoughts when Hercules nudges him.

“Hey. Want to learn how to do buttons?”

**Author's Note:**

> Did I learn how to sew for the purposes of writing this fic? Yes. Yes I did.
> 
> Comments and/or kudos greatly appreciated! Or come talk to me on tumblr at bipolarhamilton!


End file.
